Getting Started With Lesson Planning

Last Updated: Nov 27, 2013 12:34PM EST

A few notes about lesson plans:

One of our major goals at Tadpoles is to save teachers time and stress around lesson planning and daily reports. As such, we've created a way for information to be shared between the two. What this means is that any lesson plan that a teacher creates in Tadpoles does double duty. It serves as the lesson plan, and is also copied over to become a part of the daily report, saving teachers from re-writing all of that information for parents to view at the end of the day. Once all is said and done, the daily report created in Tadpoles will contain the meals, naps, diapers, notes and lessons that a child experienced throughout the day. Each child's daily report goes home by email when teachers check the child out as their parents are picking them up. Since parents will be reading this information after all of these daily activities have happened, you will want to have teachers write their lessons in the past tense, to ensure clarity.

Giving teachers access to online lesson planning:

Teachers have the ability to lesson plan in two ways, on the device and online. As soon as you go live and log into the device (using the administrator username and password), teachers can begin to input lesson plans using their tablet. To plan online, teachers will need to be set up with a login for the website. The following steps will show you how to provide a login for your teachers.

1. Log into your dashboard and select the attendance tab.2. Choose the icon of the teacher to whom you would like to give access. Click & open up their profile.

(If you have yet to add this particular employee to the roster, choose the gold Add Employee button & add their information there!)

3. Within the teacher's profile, you'll see a space to enter an email address. We suggest entering the teacher's personal email address, which will then become their login for the website.

Once you enter their addresses, we'll send each teacher a welcome email asking them to set up a password. With this, they can log into the website and begin inputting lesson plans! The teacher's side of the website is set up similarly to your dashboard, but with considerable limitations. The only options teachers have are to view and edit lesson plans, daily sheets and portfolios for their own classrooms.

To review lesson plans on the computer:

As an administrator, you will likely want to view and edit your teachers' lesson plans before they are enacted. You can do this via the computer or the device, although it is likely easier on the computer.

1. Go to tadpoles.com and log into your dashboard using the administrator email and password.
2. Head over to the, "Lesson Plans" tab.

3. To view the lessons for an individual class, select a classroom up top and then choose the day you'd like to look at. (When you click on a class & day, the boxes will be outlined in orange. Below, you can see that we are looking at the Cubs lesson plans for December 11th).

4. Once you have selected a classroom and date, the lesson plan will pop up on the right hand side. Clicking on a pre-existing activity/meal/note will bring up that information a box where you can make any necessary changes. As an administrator, you have the ability to view, edit and add to anything on this lesson plan. For example, I've opened up an art activity below. Once you finish editing, be sure to click the blue save button!

(Remember, the notes/description section goes onto the daily report, while the goals and materials sections are just for you and your staff. Only the description of the activity goes home to parents).

5. Once you've saved the activity, you will be brought back to the lesson plans page of the dashboard. From here, you can edit another activity for the same day, or choose a new classroom/day to edit! Any changes you make will be immediately reflected on both the dashboard and the device.

If you have any further questions, feel free to contact our support team anytime at talk.to.us@tadpoles.com!